Lam Research Exceeds Estimates with Strong Q4 Performance, Revenue Jumps 30%

Lam Research exceeded earnings expectations in Q4, driven by a 30 percent jump in revenue. The company's stock price surged following the release of quarterly financial results.

LRCX reported fiscal fourth quarter revenue of $6.72 billion after the close on July 29, up 30% year over year and 15% sequentially, ahead of consensus near $6.67 billion, with adjusted earnings of $1.82 a share against roughly $1.68 expected [doc12 doc6]. Gross margin came in around 51.7% to 52%, described as the company's strongest in about two decades, and the stock rose roughly 8% in after-hours trading [doc12 doc14].

The quarter was good; the guide was the event. For fiscal first quarter 2027 Lam guided revenue of $7.70 billion to $8.50 billion against consensus near $7.0 billion, and earnings of $2.00 to $2.30 a share against roughly $1.82 . A midpoint that far above the Street is an unusually wide beat for a company this size, and it implies wafer fab equipment demand accelerating rather than plateauing.

Management has pointed to advanced packaging as the fastest-moving line, with revenue expected to grow more than 50% in 2026 on copper plating and through-silicon via etch demand tied to HBM4 stacks reaching as many as 16 layers . A second leg is NAND, where roughly $40 billion of conversion spending to 200-plus-layer nodes has been pulled forward, most of it before the end of calendar 2027, as AI workloads shift pressure onto the storage layer. Lam has put 2026 industry equipment spending in the low $150 billion range, above its earlier $140 billion view .

The print landed on the same session that MU, NVDA and the broader chip complex sold off on SK Hynix's earnings miss, which makes the divergence instructive: equipment suppliers are being paid on capacity being built, while memory makers are being marked against consensus on capacity already sold. China is also no longer the swing factor it was, with China equipment share around 34% and declining while Korea and Taiwan spending runs at records . What to watch is whether peers such as AMAT and KLAC confirm the same acceleration, since a guide this far above consensus is either an early read on a broader capital spending cycle or a share-gain story specific to Lam.

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